book review-Homemade Root beer, soda, & pop

Homemade Root Beer, Soda, and Pop
by Stephen Cresswell

This book has some interesting (to say the lest) recipes in it. From standard old fashioned Root Beer to sodas involving vinegar. The book also goes over a bit of history of soda, and also includes an overview of equipment used (if carbing w/ yeast) The author feels that for soda to be truly 'old-fashioned', soda must be brewed with yeast for natural carbonation. The book also touches upon roots and shrubs, even how to tap a tree!

Here is a list of the recipes in the book:
Basic Root Beer
Basic Ginger Ale
Spruce Beer
Root Beer extract to make 8 gal
Old Fashioned Root Beer
Three-Root Beer
Rich Root Beer
Licorice Root Beer
Straight Fork Birch Beer
Sarsaparilla Soda
Virgin Islands Ginger Beer
Chinese Ginger Beer
Ginger Lager uses hops & lager yeast
Ten-Root Spring Tonic
Lemon Lime Soda
Mint Lime Cooler
Cherry Lemon Soda
Cherry Vanilla Soda
Cherry Sassafras Soda
Cherry Cinnamon Soda
Maraschino Fizz lemons and cherries
White Tigers vanilla coffee and milk
Cream Soda
Kvass black bread & peppermint
Raspberry Shrub white wine vinegar
Molasses Switchel cider vinegar
Mulled Ginger Apple Ale
Elderflower Champagne
Mulled Grapeade
Dandelion Champagne
Harvest Beer apples, raisins, cinnamon, cloves
Halloween Root Beer served with dry ice
Mulled Black Walnut Cider
Wintertime Cinnamon Shrub


There is a variation of almost every recipe in the margins. At the end of the recipes there is recipes for coffees, sherbets, and mixers.

Overall this is a great book as a reference, It opened up my eyes to different types of soda I didn't even know existed. However I don't think I'll be making any of the recipes with vinegar any time soon. The book even gave me a few ideas for brewing beer. For the price of the book (~$10) its worth adding it to your collection.

Thanks for the review. Think I'm going to go ahead and get this for my g/f.

Edit: And thanks for the PM letting me know of the review!

Thanks for the review. Looks interesting.

Note: The link you posted has an extra "http://"

Brew-Happy said:

Thanks for the review. Looks interesting.

Note: The link you posted has an extra "http://"

Click to expand...

Thanks, fixed... I didn't even check it. Oops.

I read the book and tried several of the recipies. I used cherry "juicy juice" as the base for most of them and have gotten favorable comments form friends and family. In general it only takes about an hour from start to finish for a 12 pack of 12 oz bottles.

good to hear! Juicy Juice is a neat trick!

Licorice Root Beer - got my attention.

david_42 said:

Licorice Root Beer - got my attention.

Click to expand...

i recently had an import RB from Australia (Brandenberg somethingorother) that had licorice in it, very good stuff (although i have a friend and RB fan who hated it) let me know how your experiment turns out

im almost to the point of making my RB from straight herbs